The ghost of Kiev pilot is dead, Putin is dead, Ukrainian soldiers were slaughtered on Snake Island and 300 Ukrainians perished in the Mariupol theatre attack. Which of these four news stories coming from western media is true? In fact, they are all entirely false but have been put out as entirely Bonafede news stories and not even corrected when the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary.
It seems western media doesn’t do Mea Culpa which should worry you if you are concerned about how the war in Ukraine is threatening world peace as we know it. Just how much of what we are reading is genuine? Just how much of it is presented as fact, merely because it is fed to journalists by intelligence agencies who have not only proved hands down historically to get things wrong but often—far worse—have a nefarious agenda to pursue in the dark art of fake news. How can British journalists trust Mi6 who tell them that Putin “may” be dead, when it seems like only yesterday they were also being told that Assad was dropping chemical weapons on his own people (proved to be untrue by the western-backed chemicals weapons agency, OPCW) or that earlier Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Or if you want to go back even further that Milosovic was behind the Bosnian Serb shelling of Muslims in Sarajevo in the summer of 1995 (in fact he wasn’t).
The alarming thing about the ‘reporting’ is that it is not caveated. We don’t see early in the text “we have no way of verifying this and the agency which is claiming this doesn’t even offer us concrete proof but merely asserts its view” or words to that effect.
The most that western news outlets do is simply attribute which they believe is the most prudent way of covering themselves when what they’re offering as so-called news turns out weeks or months later to be total fiction. The thundering headline on the CNN website which claims 300 people died in the Mariopol theatre bombing is attributed to the Ukrainian government. Nothing more said. No mention that the Zalenski regime can’t or won’t substantiate the claim at all, even though Reuters days later stated that it was not at all clear if 300 people had perished or not.
These nuances are important as they lead readers and viewers away from the actual truth to the perceived truth which the US and the UK want to present as factual news. The British press dutifully reported Mi6s claims that Putin could be dead, misleading the public that there are very strong grounds to believe this, knowing full well that most readers won’t digest the nuances of the claim and simply believe that the claim to be true. If such “intelligence” had any value whatsoever though surely the intelligence agency in question wouldn’t share it with the whole world. That’s not was spooks do. Intelligence, if sound, is valuable as a commodity. Why throw it around like cheap confetti? The answer, sadly, is that it’s probably absolute nonsense cooked up by media experts in Mi6 and the government as an excellent story to keep the Ukraine story alive.
Yes, Ukraine war fatigue is setting in quite quickly with the British public and the real worry from Boris and his cronies is that the press will drop it in preference for the numerous scandals which follow Johnson around, like a swarm of flies trailing a dump truck.
This explains one of the reasons why the reporting from defence correspondents in the UK and in the US is changing. These journalists, who indulge themselves more often that not with editorialising the Ukraine war, it has been noticed, are starting to be more pragmatic about Putin winning.
There are a number of reasons for this. Chiefly, it is because journalists are hooked on the story of the war in Ukraine and want it to be a never ending supply of click bait, call-centre journalism essays which keep getting lapped up by a gullible public; in reality, the interest of the British public now for Ukraine reporting has dropped dramatically in recent weeks and journalists want to resuscitate the story, so, sensing that the bigoted, limited narrative of the west is going stale, they’re shifting ground ever so slightly. Secondly, they may well be getting the nod and the wink from Boris’s own people that the war of attrition idea doesn’t have legs. The UK certainly doesn’t have the kind of cash to throw at the war that its leader would like, given that the country has hit a forty year high in terms of inflation and a political tsunami is heading Boris’s way. And thirdly, mainstream media is a slave to social media and its trends and hacks are starting to notice that the folks who ‘influence’ huge amounts of traffic are starting to ask awkward questions about the Ukraine. Stuff like, how can we be sure all this military aid is actually ending up in the Ukraine?
This point is not to be scoffed at. Until now, no one seems bothered to actually prove that a receipt of delivery is in place which should make any journalist worth his salt sceptical about the entire scheme. Doesn’t the US Congress, which is currently probing Jared Kushner’s dodgy business deals with the Saudi Crown Prince, want to have proof of delivery of 30 billion dollars worth of military kit? Isn’t it somewhat suspicious that no one in the entire political establishment of Washington is asking for this?
Not really when you look at the dark, tawdry world of politics and how western governments pay off people to do their dirty work. At best, to pump billions into the pockets of America’s defence contractors smacks of corruption. Can we assume that those same countries reward the Bidens with kickbacks? At worse we just have to look at how the British and American intelligence agencies pay terrorists. Yes, you read correctly. The British and Americans pay terrorists to do their dirty work—everything from assassinations and kidnaps to carrying out false flag attacks to frame your dictator who won’t play by their rules. If you don’t know this, then probably you still think that Father Christmas is real and that OJ is innocent, or that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Officially they can’t actually hand over taxpayers’ cash, so devious tactics which allow terrorist groups, fascist regimes and mafia organisations to ‘collect’ money are devised. Terrorists are often given arms which they can sell on the black market of more often than not allowed to deal in drugs and at times are even assisted to move narcotics into the US for payback to helping Washington or freeing hostages—which is really what Lockerbie in 1988 was all about and why it had to be covered up for decades. Is the money and the arms supposedly being sent to Ukraine really going there? Or is some of it heading into other ‘projects’ in other parts of the world? Far-fetched? Not really, as there is a history of this. In the 80s Reagan diverted 18 million dollars of cash—which was originally intended for the Iranians to free US hostages—to the Contras in Nicaragua until he was caught by Oliver North. The pretext of it all being shrouded in secrecy was justified by US hostages being held in Lebanon and any publicity would jeopardize their safety—and he almost got away with it. How do we know, with such pathetic reporting which is the norm these days, that Biden is not doing the same? Using the Ukraine war as a convenient pretext to fund other ventures which Congress would normally not support? Where are the journalists?
This article originally appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation online journal.
Martin Jay is an award-winning British journalist based in Morocco where he is a correspondent for The Daily Mail (UK) who previously reported on the Arab Spring there for CNN, as well as Euronews. From 2012 to 2019 he was based in Beirut where he worked for a number of international media titles including BBC, Al Jazeera, RT, DW, as well as reporting on a freelance basis for the UK’s Daily Mail, The Sunday Times plus TRT World. His career has led him to work in almost 50 countries in Africa, The Middle East and Europe for a host of major media titles. He has lived and worked in Morocco, Belgium, Kenya and Lebanon.
